


phosphenes

by orphan_account



Series: queen + rare words [9]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Character Study, College, College Student Brian, Early Days, Fluff, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Pining, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Sleepovers, Smile Era, a lil bit of angst but not much tbh, am i projecting my own desperate need for sleep? perhaps, art nerd freddie, john's not in this one im sorry, man i write a lot about sleeping, mary is mentioned but that's about it, space nerd brian is back and i love him, space rambling, they don't have the most healthy of habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-01-12 19:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18452762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: phosphenes - the light produced when rubbing your eyes"Freddie has to fight the sudden and near irresistible urge to hug his back. Instead, he stands up and leans against the counter beside him, basking once more in the ghost of his body heat. He rubs his eyes again, dazzled by the cosmos behind his eyelids, so similar to the one Brian’d just described. Brian gives him a little side-eye. Freddie fights back another yawn."





	1. sunset always gives way to darkness, but how else do we see the stars

**Author's Note:**

> ive fallen in love with frian because bri n freddie are my two faves and their mutual nerd relationship is beautiful. also: this is the fic that pulled me fully out of writer's block so forgive me if it's a bit too much like prose

Freddie makes sure to slam the door extra hard on the way out, as if the harsh echo would ricochet back and hit Roger smack in the face. He stomps down the stairs and imagines in his fury that every step trembles the earth, like he were a scorned god. 

He pays _half_ of the rent for his flat and yet here he is, kicked out without any warning for the third time this fucking week because Roger keeps bringing his dates back. Or, really, he isn’t kicked out as much as driven out, unwilling and unable to stand listening to Roger woo and fuck a girl through the thin, water-stained walls.

The late summer evening is a cool one, and he’s grateful he remembered to grab a jacket- Roger’s, judging from the scent of cigarettes- on his way out. He tugs at the sleeves, trying to unbunch the fabric underneath it, and pauses.

As the buzzing of anger dissipates from his head into the air swirling along the street, Freddie realizes just how quiet it is. London on a Thursday night is too tired to send out more than a few ghosts. Sunlight’s orange-colored last breaths spill across the city. Nothing looks quite solid, all watercolor edges. It’s dizzying, almost, in its drowsiness, and he rubs his eyes, watching the sparkles of light coat the burning outline of the city from behind his eyelids. 

Freddie doesn’t know where to go.

 

Kensington Market is closed by now, and he’s promised himself he’d never end up sleeping in that little stall again, anyhow. (It’d been a real low for him, and maybe a week later Roger had suggested they rent a flat together; Freddie hadn’t told him, of course not, but Roger has a sharper mind than he remembers some days, and perhaps it had taken a scalpel to Freddie’s appearance- mussed hair and wrinkled clothes, the shadows along his jaw and under his eyes, the way his voice buckled slightly under its own cheer- and put the pieces together.)

He could find someone to take him home, some lonely hungry mouth at a bar to devour him and leave his remains to gather themselves the next morning. Strangely, though, he doesn’t feel like it. Maybe it’s the gentle wind or the missing crowd or Roger’s shitty date, or maybe it’s the loneliness creeping up his spine and settling somewhere in the back of his mind, but he’s not in the mood to be eaten alive tonight.

He thinks, briefly, of Mary, with her open door and her open arms. For him she has a spot on her couch, and if he should ask, a spot in her bed. But lately there’s been something underlined in her words- she’s silently asking for something, and Freddie’s too scared to figure out what it is because he knows he can’t give it to her.

The idea of her is too much to bear right now. He wants to go somewhere where no one expects anything from him. 

 

* * *

 

Brian May takes so long to answer the door that Freddie almost turns around. But he does, door swinging open with a calm haphazardness Freddie has never seen from anyone but him.

In the dying light of the sun, his cheekbones glow and his eyes burn and his hair becomes a halo and he looks like every angel in the paintings Freddie’s studied put together, and Freddie almost chokes on his breath.

Brian murmurs “Freddie?” and the hunch of his shoulders shifts- not quite loosening, but less drawn than before. Freddie greets him and gives him his best smile, the one he knows most people can’t say no to, but Brian’s already stepping back to allow him in.

He still makes sure to explain himself as he unlaces his boots. “Roger’s got a date over, _again_ , and I’ve been ever so rudely kicked out.” He lifts his eyes as he slips his left boot off. He hadn’t meant to sound so dramatic, really, but it’s become a habit easy to hide behind. Brian’s watching him, towering above him, the hallway shadows clustered on his face. “Would you mind terribly if I borrowed your couch? Just for the night?” He offers Brian another smile, as if it would be bright where the sun was before and chase the shadows away.

Brian shakes his head, a moon-reflection of Freddie’s smile on his own face. 

“Of course, Fred.”

He says it like it should be obvious. Like they’ve known each other for years instead of months, or maybe he’s just this welcoming to everyone (but Freddie’s seen him around strangers and knows he’s not. He plays the perfect gentleman and holds his distance. This is different, and special, and for _him._ ) Freddie looks down as he pulls his other boot off and allows himself to be caught off-guard by the kindness.

 

Every home has its own distinctive smell- Freddie’s always noticed, every time he enters an unfamiliar flat. Brian’s smells like the open-book scent of a library, the cleaness of running water, the sweetness of herbal shampoo and herbal tea, of strong coffee, of broken pen ink, of _Brian_.

(It’s not an unfamiliar flat, though. Freddie’s been here once before.

He watches Smile practice most days now, because Tim knows him and Roger lives with him and Brian likes him. He sits on the floor with his sketchbook, sometimes doodling or designing clothing, sometimes making mental notes of things they do that he’d change and sometimes scribbling down music of his own. The atmosphere is like springtime to him- ideas breed there like nowhere else, and he’s just patiently awaiting the day one of them ask to see what he’s writing.

It happened like this: Roger left practice early for a test in his Human Anatomies class (Freddie still hasn’t decided whether that was an innuendo or not), and Brian invited Tim and Freddie over for tea. Or, really, he invited Tim so they could go over the lyrics of something they were working on together, and Freddie followed because Brian smiled so sweetly at him as they packed up that he could only take it as an invitation.

It happened like this: Freddie sat in Brian’s little kitchen clutching a fine china mug because that was the set Brian’d received from his mother and watching long fingers twirl a pen. The lights were yellow and the walls were pink cream and the tablecloth was faded blue. The tea was an herbal infusion Brian liked and Freddie was distracted because the room smelled like Brian, the time he’d pulled Freddie, half drunk, into a tight hug, long arms perfectly wrapped around him and nose cold against the side of his forehead.

It happened like this: Brian and Tim murmured over a sheet of paper covered in scribbled lyrics and music notes, and Brian tapped his pen against his lips and Freddie watched, and maybe he’s been watching ever since.)

 

The kitchen is just the same as he remembers, clean and mostly uncluttered. It’s so unlike his shared flat, stuffed to the brim with trinkets and art and clothing draped over every other surface. Brian’s home feels almost unlived in, in comparison. Like a hotel room, he knows he won’t be here long. He’s _going places._ Freddie wants to go with him.

The table, though, is covered, to the point where it’s nearly invisible, under the mountain of papers and books and other miscellaneous clutter. The blue tablecloth is rumpled in a few spots, creating valleys and mountains of college-assigned work. Freddie can see one paper covered every square centimeter in long, complicated equations, and has a fleeting moment of relief. _‘Thank fuck I’m no longer in college.’_ The sight of it is enough to bring the earlier drowse back.

A small window frames the sunset over the kitchen sink. Brian smiles at him as he settles into a wooden chair- the same chair as last time, in fact- and offers tea. 

“I’d offer something to eat, but- uh,” he shakes his head a little, lips not-quite-curving as he looks to the floor, “there’s nothing to offer.” His arms, skeletal-looking in the yellow kitchen light and so very pale against the faded-warm walls, wrap over themselves in front of his torso. 

Freddie realizes this may be why the kitchen is so tidy. 

“No problem, dear,” he responds with a cheer he doesn’t quite feel. Not that he has dinner most days, but he worries for Brian; he’s skinny and tired-looking enough as it is. Freddie scribbles down a small mental note to take Brian out for dinner next time he has the money, and holds onto it, surrounded by Brian’s own scribbles. 

 

“So what exactly have you been doing?” Freddie tries as the kettle slowly warms on Brian’s ancient-looking stovetop. He waves a hand over the paper-strewn tabletop. Brian blinks twice, head jerking towards the chaos.

“Ah! Well, homework, mostly- I’ve got this paper due on Tuesday, which I’m nearly half ways through and- well, it’s not all that interesting.” He trails off, shoulders pulling in. Freddie doesn’t like seeing him do that, making himself look smaller in his own home- or really, anywhere, but this is his place, and that makes it worse, somehow.

(Freddie knows what it means, how could he not: Brian’s been told, maybe a bit too young or maybe a few too many times, that whatever he was talking about wasn’t interesting. Wasn’t worth listening to. Freddie doesn’t know much of Brian, but he knows exactly what that feels like.

And it makes getting to know Brian so much harder. It makes Brian hesitant and self-conscious, and it makes him angry, makes him want to hunt down those who’ve shut Brian up in the past and tear them apart, how _dare they try and bottle up such brilliance-_

His fingers are digging into his thighs. He releases them slowly, breathes even and checks to see if Brian saw anything, but Brian is looking down and away, hair shielding his face, and Freddie has to remind himself to breathe again.)

 

So he does what he always does: he encourages Brian. Prods at him for elaboration until he explains that the upcoming paper is about the naming of planets, and then picks up random note papers and bookmarked pages and asks him about everything he sees until Brian sits down next to him at the table to properly talk. Their steaming china teacups carve a small patch of bare tabletop, and it’s cozy like nothing else.

Brian takes each question and turns it over in his hands, gentle, and answers it best he can. Freddie takes each explanation and swallows it best he can, tucking it into the space between his ribs. 

He watches the curve of Brian’s lips, the flash of sharp teeth, the glimmer of sunlight’s final explosion filtering through the window in his eyes and the way it sets his curls aflame. He wants to trace those sharp yet strangely soft features, with a pencil on paper and with his fingers on skin. The warmth of Brian’s body is a ghostly presence along his own. Freddie can’t tell if he’s not close enough or if Brian runs cool. He wants to press their bodies together, to find out, to make the heat a tangible thing instead of a shadow, but Brian is lost in the galaxies he studies and Freddie doesn’t dare bring him home.

 

Somewhere between a “why” and the question mark, a yawn traps itself. Freddie tries to ignore it, would like to sit here with Brian all night in mildly uncomfortable wood chairs and listen to him detail the cosmos as if it’s a painting in his old art history classes (though the cosmos is endless in its darkness, something ancient curling between each pinprick of light, and there are some things even Brian can’t explain. Freddie wonders what it’s like to bury yourself in the unknown, and thinks in some ways Brian is a bit braver than he is.) He scrubs at his face to try and keep himself awake, but light shimmers in spots under the pressure of his palms and all it does it make him dizzy.

He’s not sure if Brian notices, but a couple sentences later his rambles come to a quiet stop and he eyes Freddie, lids heavy. Freddie ignores how similar that look is to other looks he gets and picks up his teacup, only to find it cold and long empty.

Brian laughs out a sigh and leans forward. “S’pose it’s gotten a bit late.” Long fingers curl around Freddie’s cup, chasing his own as they let go. Brian collects the cups carefully and rises, head brushing the yellow light hanging above them. Freddie cannot help the way his eyes trail up slowly. Brian doesn’t notice, or maybe he doesn’t want to.

“Sorry for talking so much and- uh, keeping you up ‘nd all.” Brian apologizes and Freddie kind of wants to punch him because it means he missed the whole point. Freddie _asked_ him to talk. The ugly vine of insecurity growing along that lanky body may have deeper roots than he’d thought, and he realizes now that he has his work cut out for him.

“You’re perfectly fine, dear. I like listening to you, anyhow. Well, most of the time.” Freddie adds the last bit cheekily because he can see Brian’s face, the way it hovers between open and closed, unsure how to take the compliment. That sharp grin is almost relieved. Brian snorts, rolls his eyes, turns towards the sink. In front of him, the window shows the few stars strong enough to burn through the haze of London air.

Freddie has to fight the sudden and near irresistible urge to hug his back. Instead, he stands up and leans against the counter beside him, basking once more in the ghost of his body heat. He rubs his eyes again, dazzled by the cosmos behind his eyelids, so similar to the one Brian’d just described. Brian gives him a little side-eye. Freddie fights back another yawn.

It doesn’t quite work. “Y’know Freddie, you can take my bed. I’ve got to work on this paper a bit longer.” 

Freddie suddenly feels a bit bad, wasting Brian’s time with silly questions. “Then where will you sleep?”

Something shifts in Brian’s expression. Something miniscule that sets off the familiar protective instinct in Freddie’s gut. “Oh, I can take the couch,” he says lightly. 

Freddie narrows his eyes. “Absolutely not, darling, I’m not forcing you out of your own bed.”

“Freddie, it’s fine, really.” 

“Isn’t that couch of yours too small? I- we don’t need you to be getting back pains.”

“It’s fine, I’ve slept on it loads of times. C’mon, Freddie.” _‘Let me do this for you’_ his eyes say. 

Freddie frowns, pulls his lips down over his teeth. He’s always been stubborn, but Brian takes stubborn to a whole other level, and he’s starting to get quite sleepy. Exhaustion smears the painted scenery before his eyes. Light is dancing in the kitchen bulbs and he hasn’t even touched his eyes this time.

“Alright,” he concedes reluctantly, perhaps a little swayed by the softness of bedsheets, practically tangible from here, “but if that little couch is uncomfortable, don’t hesitate to wake me up and kick me out.” An idea pops into his mind, and he says it before he can overthink. “Or join me, if you want.”

Brian’s amused smile is a dim kitchen light of its own. “You got it, Fred,” he says and Freddie knows he won’t do either.

 

* * *

 

Brian’s bed smells of Brian. It shouldn’t be a shock, and _yet_ -

Freddie sits down on the edge, delicately as he can, and breathes deeply. The bedsheets are even softer than he imagined, worn by years of use, though maybe he’s just exhausted and everything feels more than he thinks it will. Those stars are dancing in the darkness of his eyelids, spinning under his fingertips as he presses his hands to his face, and he nearly passes out right here and now.

The air is heavier in here, trapped between four lightly decorated off-white walls. He thinks, nonsensically, of Van Gogh's bedroom, and how the set up of it isn't too far from this. He wants to poke around, learn more about Brian, unravel more of his mystery from the tapestry it currently is that divides them, but he’s well and truly drained. _Tomorrow, then._

He strips down mechanically; always a rather slow process, as he has to tease the tight fabric down his legs for fear of tearing something. His trousers go under the mattress, as always, to be pressed and wrinkle-less for tomorrow. His shirt is draped over the desk chair, and jewelry and belt rest along the spare windows of space in the bookcase.

The bed stands before him, strangely daunting. He has a strange of feeling of no return as he lifts the covers, and it’s all he can do not to picture Brian laying here, stripped down and spread out, limbs awry as his hair curls around his face. Freddie has only seen him asleep once, in all the months he’s known him, and it was something he’ll never let himself forget. 

Every stress and line in his face, washed away by the waters of unconsciousness, making him look almost fae-like, a pre-Raphaelite painting. He’d been curled up in the back of Roger’s van after a late night performance, tucked away between two leather seats like a secret. Roger had shushed him and Freddie had barely been able to look away.

Now, Freddie dispels the image and lays down carefully under the cotton sheets. The scent of Brian, not quite familiar but growing to be, wraps long arms around him and pulls him into sleep. Brian’s words, painting space into a tangible thing, spins out in a beautiful display of light as his eyes close.


	2. and in the waking light we remember the sun is a star as well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG AAAAA i got suddenly very busy and then had a semi-public breakdown lmao but here we finally are! this should've been done ages ago but i hope the wait was at least somewhat worth it :,)

Freddie wakes up feeling like something is missing.

Before he even opens his eyes, he knows it. The bed is empty beside him. If Brian’s body heat last night was a ghost, this is a ghost of a ghost. Barely a spectre.

He swallows the small, bitter disappointment like morning breath and sits up, blinded by the beaming sun. It burns through his eyelids and his hands, filling his eyes with liquid light, and he doesn’t notice his eyes are watering until the feeling of wetness drip-slides down his chest. 

He sits in Brian’s bed, bedsheets hugging his waist like he’d dreamed Brian would do, and lets salt drip from his eyes until it’s exhausted itself. Sun breathes over the room, catching every surface in delicate light. Freddie cannot help but admire it for a moment, remembering the light study paintings he did once. His own room keeps heavy curtains over small windows, a shield to early mornings and glaring hangovers.

Brian’s room is bigger than his, or maybe just less full of stuff, and it feels wonderfully open as Freddie stretches. He wonders offhand if Brian stretches when he wakes up- surely he must, everyone does- and if the room feels big enough. Freddie’s watched him curl up and fold into spaces since that first evening meeting him with Roger; met him tucked into a booth, legs bent and shoulders hunched. Brian’s shoulders always seem to be hunched, pulling into his body, and it makes them much narrower than they are. Freddie, not narrow in the shoulders himself, can feel his muscles twinge in sympathy at the thought of holding himself like Brian does.

Rolling his arms out, he remembers his decision to poke around the room. Brian’s bed is a gentle cream turned a pool of blinding white in the morning sun. The window is clean and bare, lacking in the knick knacks Freddie and Roger line theirs with. It’s strange, really. He expected him to at least have a plant.

Moving on to prowl the bookcase, Freddie finds Brian does not, in fact, have them organized in alphabetical order.

“Brian dear, you disappoint me,” he murmurs, pulling out a thin paperback copy of a book titled “ _Catcher in the Rye_ ” which he has vague memories of reading back in school and finding rather uninviting. It’s worn slightly along the spine and the corners are gently curling up. He wonders if Brian read it in school as well.

(The thought of little Brian, only a boy, with cropped curls and gangly limbs he doesn’t yet know he’ll never grow into, has Freddie grinning into the bending cover. Brian never talks much about his younger days, back before he knew Freddie or Roger or even Tim. 

Freddie decides that’s another thing he’ll have to coax out of him.)

 

It turns out Brian does have a system after all. Freddie finds all of the obnoxiously heavy textbooks with drawn out titles at the bottom, the well-worn and well-loved books like “ _Catcher in the Rye_ ” in the middle, presumably ones he’d brought from his parents’ home, and a whole array of books Freddie doesn’t recognize at the top. Some of those top books have recent publish dates, some ancient, vary wildly from Jane Austen to other languages to more volumes about space. Some are visibly aged, but the detached sort of age that comes from buying books second hand. Some look to have yet to be opened.

Freddie files all this away for later musings. He’s yet to decipher what it all means about Brian’s character, and he’s starting to feel vaguely hungry. 

 

His pants are about halfway up when he remembers Brian has no food.

 

* * *

 

The apartment is a different shade of hotel-room empty in the morning. Freddie pads into the kitchen like he’s never been here before because he hasn’t really, not like this. He’s never seen Brian in the nakedness of waking, in the bareness of home.

The light makes everything a different shape, always makes things look different-

Freddie stops. His breath sits in his chest patiently while he forgets how to exhale. 

Brian, painted into the scenery of the yellow-pink-cream-sun-glow kitchen, lined with a warm brilliance like it was spilling over his edges, asleep at the table. Soft cheek over hard cheekbone pressed into soft pages over hard table.

His mouth, a half-open smear of pink, sighs. Freddie trembles.

Even in his sleep, Brian looks sad. So sad, and so _beautiful._ Heartbreakingly beautiful.

(And he knows why he finds it so beautiful- because sadness is so often an ugly thing. He has to turn his own into melody to accept that it’s there. He’s only ever truly loved beautiful things, and god, Brian May is a work of art.)

Brian’s eyelashes flutter off the dewdrops of sleep and he inhales oxygen like a helium balloon, rising with a deep inhale. He looks over, sees Freddie, and blinks down in something like guilt.

It hits him.

“You never planned on going to bed, did you?” 

Brian shrugs, as if his own health is a winter coat to be disregarded. Freddie wants to shake him. An awful thought that’s been nagging at the back of his mind rises to the surface.

“How often do you sleep?” He asks, stepping forward into the no-longer-quite-as-warm kitchen. Paper crinkles under Brian’s thin hands as he shuffles them into neater stacks. He doesn’t look at Freddie.

Freddie wonders if Brian is one of _those people,_ one who couldn’t handle confrontations about their own behavior, would rather run away. Brian doesn’t look to be on the verge of bolting, but he still hasn’t offered a response, shifting his neat stacks into rows, and Freddie accepts maybe he’s not going to get one.

He doesn’t know Brian well enough to know how to approach this, whether to come at him like a bull or a birdcatcher, and he’s not going to risk this delicate, complicated thing knitting itself between them.

He does the next best thing:

“Want to go for breakfast?”

 

(Brian says yes, smiles his sharp smile, brilliant sunshine tangible in the empty kitchen. 

Freddie thinks about pressing his lips to Brian’s only once, and pushes it gently away. Brian’s coat is wonderfully large around him, almost too warm in the morning chill, and light glints off the pavement so brightly Freddie can almost see the stars Brian loves so much.

He tells Brian that. Brian laughs, body shifting closer to Freddie’s, and Freddie thinks burning up is an okay way to go if it’s Brian’s radiant starlight he’s been caught by.)

 

 

“I usually average about ten hours.”

Freddie munches on a lovely little croissant, eyeing Brian as he sips on a steaming mug of black coffee. (“You drink that horrid stuff?” A patient eyebrow raise. “Yes, Freddie.”)

“That’s not so bad,” he says.

“A week.”

He very nearly chokes on his croissant. _”What?!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably the last work in this series, unfortunately. i've mostly moved on from queen (though i continue to enjoy their music), which is no one's fault, but it's a little sad because i invested a lot in it. but i'm extremely grateful for this fandom!! not only for the amazing friends i've made and the lovely people i've talked to, but the opportunity it gave me to develop my writing skills! 
> 
> i'll still be writing, but for queen no longer. goodbye my lovelies, and thank you for all the overwhelming support! i hope you've enjoyed :)

**Author's Note:**

> there's a part two of this coming, but tell me what you think so far!! (my first chaptered fic for this series, how exciting!)


End file.
